Camping: Where do we draw the line?

By Panda McBearface at Tuesday, January 08, 2013 3:02:45 PM

The word “camping” in gaming refers to the act of being a complete tool by staying in or protecting one point on the map in a First Person Shooter and killing everyone from there because you are a massive douche. Having recently decided to embark on the adventure of playing solely to camp in order to be deliberately annoying as part of a social experiment I am conducting, I thought that it would be a good idea to discover whether there is actually such a thing as “ethical camping” or whether this style of play (because technically, it is that) is something people just have to man up and deal with.

Things to love: camping is a Legitimate Strategy

We don’t play games if we don’t win at least sometimes. So if guarding one point on the map gives you a strategic advantage over the other team and means you get to pwn their heads, then why not? Plus, if the Pacman ghosts can camp, why can’t you? And anyway, when you play a game like Battlefield 3 and you are a sniper, you pretty much have to camp if you don’t want to die (call it ambushing if you feel that will help retain your dignity).

I guess you could also define camping as “playing defensively.” Take the example of Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendell who won many a Quake duel by running and hiding (read: camping) and even though people got mad and hated him, he still won all the moneys, meaning that he won not only in the game, but in RL as well.

Things to hate: camping is Annoying As F***

Camping makes people very, very mad. Getting fragged by a camper even though you know that he is always hiding in the same freaking spot every single round and still manages to kill you is something that would probably make even a Buddhist monk rage, maybe.

Another thing that makes people feel somewhat upset is that it’s very boring to play someone who camps while you run around the map like a chicken with his head cut off. Also, in terms of strategy, it just seems pretty lazy if you ask me (despite previously stated legitimacy).

The final thing to hate about camping is that you get unbelievably irritating people like me who do it solely to get under your skin because your rage amuses us. The great thing about it is that you can’t even report us, because it’s part of the game. I like to think that I am kind of justified in doing this because of previously mentioned social experiment and also because science (LOLJK, your angry feels are delicious and they sustain me).

I think that what we conclude here that even though we can try and justify our reasons for camping, people will always hate you for doing it. So to those who get mad, I say simply: